On this behind-the-scenes interview, we speak to Dr. Sinéad Knight, chair of SLAS Europe 2023, about this yr’s program, highlighting the important thing topics and incredible speakers presenting on the show.

Please are you able to introduce yourself and tell us what inspired your profession throughout the life sciences?

I’m Sinéad Knight, originally from Tipperary in Ireland, but I even have been living within the UK since 2010.

My profession within the life sciences began after I moved to Dublin at just 17 to review Biotechnology at Dublin City University. I used to be all the time involved in Biology and enjoyed the topic in secondary school.

After I graduated, I got my first job in a QC laboratory at Baxter Healthcare. There I discovered that I had missed research and shortly returned to Dublin to do my Ph.D. at Trinity College Dublin. I even have all the time enjoyed the research aspect of the life sciences, and I find the clinical nature of drug discovery most inspiring.

Currently, you’re a principal scientist at Sygnature Discovery, a number one independent provider of integrated drug discovery resources and expertise. Are you able to tell us more about your role and a few of your day-to-day responsibilities?

My role at Sygnature Discovery may be very dynamic, and I work with many consumers at different drug discovery phases and across various therapeutic areas.

At Sygnature, we’re surrounded by experts from each the biotech and pharmaceutical industries and a part of my role is to leverage this to assist our clients implement effective drug discovery strategies. I’ll work with computational chemists, bioscientists, biophysicists, medicinal chemists, and in vivo pharmacologists on any given day.

It’s a fun and dynamic environment, and there’s all the time something recent to learn every day. I benefit from the array of various targets and therapeutic areas.

Image Credit: Gorodenkoff/Shutterstock.com

As someone with over 15 years of experience working in pharmaceutical drug discovery projects, how do you’re feeling the drug discovery sector has evolved during the last ten years? How vital is the sector in enabling a greater future for human health?

I feel Drug Discovery turned a corner after the COVID-19 pandemic, and I feel it has given scientists added confidence that drugs will be discovered and delivered to avoid wasting lives and have a social impact with the best funding and collaborations. Collaborations are so vital now for drug discovery; we now have seen this increasingly more; targets get validated quicker, and medicines get discovered more effectively when teams come together.

I also think scientists today have the added challenge of climate change and reducing our carbon footprint within the laboratory. I feel inspired by the younger scientists joining the lab and coming up with recent ideas to cut back plastics and waste within the laboratory. Like so many other industries, the life sciences need to alter. It’s getting harder and harder to disregard the waste generated in life science laboratories. 

With so many breakthroughs being made, technology has to constantly evolve to maintain up. What role does technology play in the sphere of drug discovery, and the way are recent fields comparable to AI and machine learning impacting this?

Technology is every thing. It goes hand in hand with drug discovery, and it allows the life sciences to evolve and open doors which have previously been shut, allowing us to do things faster, smarter and cheaper,

At Sygnature, we now have to remain on top of technological advances to remain competitive and attract clients. We work with many startups who need to get answers quickly and efficiently, and technology allows us to do that.

I feel AI and machine learning are having a hugely positive impact on the life sciences, especially in mining clinical data to discover footprints of disease and identifying biomarkers. Be careful for the OMICS, Big Data, and AI session within the Frontiers in Technology Track.

In addition to your role at Sygnature Discovery, you’re also involved in SLAS as one in all their program committee members for SLAS EU 2023. Why did you become involved with SLAS, and what does your role entail?

Working with SLAS is a very vital a part of my profession, it enables me to network with colleagues across all the key pharmaceutical industries, comparable to GSK, AZ, and Roche, in addition to academia and biotech. It helps me stay on top of latest developments and technologies, which is a big a part of my profession.

My role as conference chair is to make sure we bring relevant and cutting-edge to the conference. Attendees come to the conference hoping to find out about recent developments of their area and create recent collaborations.

An enormous a part of my role is ensuring that we represent a various community at SLAS, from biotech, pharmaceutical and academic institutions. I even have worked in academia, biotech, CRO, and pharmaceuticals, so it helps construct a various set of contacts and provides a perspective on different content different scientific communities will profit from.

I’m also an associate editor for SLAS Discovery, one in all two open-access journals published by SLAS. We have recently added several article types to our journals. It offers one other platform to showcase research, protocols, analyses, or other scientific and technical advances. 

SLAS Europe 2022 – Dublin, IrelandPlay

SLAS EU 2023 is a global exhibition that brings together life sciences professionals from academia to industry. What makes SLAS special, and the way does the collaboration between academia and industry help to speed up recent discoveries within the life sciences?

For me, SLAS is special since it reaches out across such a various scientific community internationally, representing biotech, big pharma, and academia. Each community offers something unique in drug discovery, whether it’s infrastructure, biological insight, or drug discovery know-how, and SLAS is an ideal platform to bring these together.

Collaborations between academia and industry are hugely useful to the life sciences. In academia, we regularly have experts in a selected therapeutic area, often with close links to University hospitals and clinical samples/data, which may offer invaluable insights into biological processes and therapeutic targets. However, the industry has many years of drug discovery know-how and might help bring drugs from hit ID through to guide optimization and clinical studies. Each communities can learn and develop faster, making it more fun. Working with different communities makes our job more difficult, interesting, and colourful.

At Europe 2023, we now have a wealthy palette of speakers/chairs from academic institutes comparable to the University of Oxford, University College Dublin, The Sanger, and the University of Edinburgh.

This yr’s conference and exhibition will concentrate on 4 vital educational tracks; Biology Unveiled, Frontiers in Technology, Shaping the Way forward for Therapeutics, and Bio-Entrepreneurship in Europe’. Are you able to tell us more about these tracks and the importance of specializing in these areas specifically?

We hope with the broad-reaching tracks that, there might be something for everybody that has an interest in drug discovery,

Frontiers in technology will showcase recent developments in technology, however the Biology Unveiled track will show how these technologies impact and help drive and improve the drug discovery process.

I’m really looking forward to the Shaping the Way forward for Therapeutics, and I feel this might be a very talked-about track. We’ve seen many developments on this area during the last decade, and the track includes sessions on Cell Therapy, Gene Therapy, Targeted Protein Degradation, and RNA Therapeutics.

Bio-entrepreneurship is an exciting recent track, offering worthwhile insights to those involved in securing investment or developing their research right into a startup.

At SLAS EU, there will even be quite a few incredible speakers discussing a number of the biggest challenges within the life sciences in addition to recent research and technologies. Are you able to talk us through a number of the speakers people can expect from SLAS this yr?

Well, there might be so many great talks; it isn’t a straightforward task to focus on just a few. The speakers will cover an enormous range of topics and can represent academia, biotech, and pharmaceuticals.

The Frontiers in Technology track has speakers lined as much as talk through topics on sample management, high content screening and protein science and OMICS, big data, and AI. Louise Weiss from the AI hub will talk about “Machine learning to uncover digital fingerprints in translational omics data”. We even have talks on sample management from AstraZeneca, Evotech, and Grenova.

Within the biology unveiled track, we now have some exciting talks lined up within the Goal Validation track from AstraZeneca, The Sanger Institute, and Benevolent AI.

We’ve expert speakers in future therapeutic areas comparable to cell therapy, gene therapy, RNA therapeutics, and protein-targeted degradation.

Bio-entrepreneurship is an exciting recent track, offering worthwhile insights from Enterprise Capitalist Investment to Innovation and IP management.

Image Credit: AZoNetwork

SLAS can also be unique as they provide ‘Innovation AveNEW’, an area on the exhibition floor dedicated to startups. What role do startups have within the life sciences ecosystem, and why is showcasing these recent firms invaluable?

Startups are an enormous a part of the life sciences ecosystem; they carry a dynamic to drug discovery that usually bridges the strengths of academia with industry. In addition to publishing research, startups translate research into work that has an impact on drug discovery.

Showcasing these recent firms at SLAS2023 might help raise the profile of latest startups and what they provide across the drug discovery community, foster collaboration, and generate business opportunities.

With over 100 exhibiting firms and diverse international speakers, why should individuals attend SLAS EU 2023? Where can people go to register?

SLAS Europe only comes around every year. For us here in Europe, it’s easier to get to than SLAS within the US, however it offers the identical array of dynamic content from international speakers.

It is a improbable opportunity to network with the life sciences community and get on top of things on recent developments and technologies. It is a likelihood to meet up with vendors, talk through their latest developments, after which head back to your institute full of ideas for innovation.

You may register online at https://www.slas.org/events-calendar/slas-europe-2023-conference-and-exhibition/attend/register/

What’s next for you and your profession? Are you involved in any exciting upcoming projects?

In addition to chairing SLAS Europe this yr, I even have also been involved in designing the course content for an SLAS High Content Biology workshop, and I’m looking forward to seeing that being rolled out this yr.

After serving on the SLAS European Scientific Program Committee (ESPC) for 2 years, I even have recently been elected as vice-chair, and I sit up for the brand new challenges it brings.

I’m also an associate editor for SLAS Discovery, one in all two open-access journals published by SLAS. We have recently added several article types to our journals, including protocols, and I sit up for promoting this amongst the life sciences community.

At Sygnature Discovery, I’m involved in many various drug discovery projects from early Hit ID, goal validation, and lead optimization across quite a lot of therapeutic areas comparable to Oncology and Neuroscience, and I’m looking forward to working along with our experts in Cell Biology, Biophysics, Med Chemistry, and Computational Chemistry to seeing these projects progress over the subsequent yr.

About Dr. Sinéad Knight

Sinead received her PhD in Genetics from Trinity college Dublin, Ireland before moving quickly to the biotech industry. 
With almost twenty years of business experience in biotech and biopharmaceuticals, Sinéad is an authority in the sphere of #drug discovery, #goal identification and goal validation. 

Sinéad is currently Principal Scientist and Section Head at Sygnature Discovery working closely with SMEs and biotech firms to develop and progress drug discovery projects. 

Previous roles comparable to Associate Principal Scientist with the Functional Genomics group in #AstraZeneca instilled a love of using cutting-edge technology and informatics to uncover and 
translate biology and novel targets across a spread of therapeutic areas including cardiovascular, metabolism and oncology.

Sinead’s experience in drug discovery ranges from early hit identification in high-throughput screening through to guide optimisation and candidate selection. 

Sinéad has been involved with SLAS since 2019 and is a member of ESPC (SLAS European Scientific Programming Committee) and SLASDiscovery editorial board.